ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan’s ranking on the global corruption index has fallen slightly to 136 out of 182 countries, according to Transparency International (TI), which also listed Islamabad among nations considered dangerous for journalists investigating corruption.
The 2025 report covers 182 countries, an addition of two more territories compared to a year ago, which also contributed to a drop of one rank in Pakistan’s global ranking on the index.
Despite the drop in the rankings, Pakistan’s score on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) improved marginally from 27 to 28 in 2025. However, the country is still grouped with nations perceived as highly corrupt, such as Bolivia and Iraq. The score is well below Pakistan’s recent best of 33 in 2018.
TI’s flagship annual report comes days after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) claimed recoveries of Rs11.5 trillion ($41 billion) from 2023 to 2025 – more than double Pakistan’s official foreign exchange reserves of $16 billion.
The CPI measures perceived public corruption on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 indicates very corrupt and 100 represents very clean.
For context, India scored 39 in a rank of 91, Bangladesh 24 in 150 and Afghanistan 16 in 169.
TI noted that small fluctuations in scores are more significant than changes in rank, as rankings can be affected by the performance of other countries.
The report has also commented on the situation of journalists investigating corruption stories.
“When journalists are attacked or killed for investigating corruption, the authorities cannot be effectively held accountable and corruption tends to worsen,” the report said. Since 2012, 829 journalists have been murdered in non-conflict zones worldwide, it added.
The report highlighted that 150 journalists were killed while covering corruption-related stories, five of them in 2025. “Over 90% of these killings occurred in countries with a CPI score lower than 50, including Brazil, India, Mexico, Pakistan and Iraq, which are particularly dangerous for journalists reporting on corruption,” TI said.
It added that the CPI 2025 shows that corruption remains a serious threat in all parts of the world, although there are limited signs of progress. Leaders must act to tackle the abuse of power and the broader factors driving this decline, such as the rollback of democratic checks and balances and attacks on independent civil society, the report said.
Pakistan has also recently released the ‘Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment’ report under the compulsion of the IMF. The IMF’s report depicts a sad situation as the global lender has asked Islamabad to introduce short- to long-term measures to tackle corruption and poor governance, including improving the rule of law and the justice system.
NAB has recently claimed in its annual performance report that the graft-buster directly or indirectly recovered a whopping Rs6.2 trillion from the corrupt elements in the last year. It further claimed that the direct and indirect recoveries of corruption proceeds amounted to Rs 11.5 trillion for the past three years alone.
Such a high level of Rs 11.5 trillion. recoveries indicate the widespread corruption in Pakistan and also confirm the 136 ranking on the global index.
According to details given by NAB to the media, the recoveries were made through recovery of land of encroached government and other organizations as well as cash. These included reclaiming three million acres of encroached government and forest land worth approximately Rs 6 trillion.
NAB Sukkur recovered 1.63 million acres of land worth Rs 3.73 trillion. It was not clear who assessed the baseline values or what methodology was used. NAB Balochistan reportedly recovered 1.02 million acres worth Rs1.37 trillion, while NAB Multan recovered 330,000 acres worth Rs654 billion, along with 51 kanals of government land worth Rs29.4 billion in Islamabad.
